14. Luciana Creed
LUCIANA CREED
My phone buzzed against the kitchen counter just as I finished pouring myself a cup of coffee.
I glanced down at the screen to see it was Maddox.
HIM: They’re landing around noon.
My stomach tightened immediately as I stared at the message while the reality of it settled over me all at once.
His daughter was coming. Not for a quick visit. Not for dinner. She was coming here. To this house for the weekend with us. For the last few days, I’d known this moment was coming. I’d tried convincing myself I was ready for it.
Now standing here in my kitchen… I realized I wasn’t.
Another message popped onto the screen before I had a chance to respond.
Him: You okay?
I let out a low laugh.
The man had some nerve asking that question.
Was I okay?
His daughter was about to walk through our front door. Our marriage was hanging together by threads I wasn’t even sure still existed, and somehow, he wanted to know if I was okay.
The crazy part was…
I knew he wasn’t asking just to make conversation.
He genuinely wanted to know.
That somehow made the question even harder to answer.
My fingers hovered over the keyboard before I finally typed the only response I could manage.
ME: I’m fine.
The lie delivered instantly.
I locked my phone and set it back on the counter before wrapping both hands around my coffee mug. The warmth should’ve been comforting, but it wasn’t.
No matter how hard I tried to focus on today, my thoughts kept circling back to the same place.
Everything was changing.
Not tomorrow.
Not eventually.
Today…
In a few short hours, the little girl I’d spent years trying to keep out of Maddox’s life would walk through our front door, and there wasn’t a single thing I could do to stop what came next.
I locked my phone and set it on the counter. When I looked up, Michael was watching me with his little forehead wrinkled in concern.
“You sad?”
The question caught me completely off guard.
I looked down at him, and my heart damn near broke. I brushed my hand across his cheek and forced the best smile I could manage.
“No, baby.”
Michael didn’t look convinced.
For a few seconds, he just stood here staring at me before reaching over and patting my hand the same way I always did whenever he was upset. The gesture was so innocent, so sweet, and so completely unexpected that I almost cried right here in the middle of the kitchen.
Instead, I smiled. Then I leaned down and kissed the top of his head.
“Thank you.”
Michael grinned, completely unaware that he’d just made my morning a little easier.
The rest of the morning passed in a blur. Between making breakfast, getting the boys dressed, answering a dozen random questions, and trying to keep Michael from wearing two different shoes, I barely had time to think.
Honestly, that was probably a good thing.
Thinking hadn’t exactly been helping lately.
By eleven-thirty, the house looked exactly the way you’d expect when two little boys lived in it, like a tornado had passed through.
Video game controllers were scattered across the living room. Sneakers sat in the middle of the floor. Backpacks had somehow ended up on the couch, and a random dinosaur was lying beneath the coffee table.
I stopped and stared at it for a second.
The child didn’t even play with dinosaurs anymore.
At least… I didn’t think he did.
“Michael!”
His voice echoed through the house almost immediately.
“What?”
The laughter had barely faded when the front door opened and Maddox walked in.
The second Michael heard him, he came flying around the corner with that same dinosaur still clutched in his hand.
“Daddy!”
Maddox barely had time to shut the door before Michael crashed into his legs. A smile spread across his face as he reached down and scooped him up.
“There go my boy.”
“I found my dinosaur.”
“I heard.”
Michael grinned proudly like he’d just accomplished something major.
I couldn’t help but smile.
MJ wandered into the foyer a few seconds later, moving at his usual pace. Unlike his little brother, he wasn’t nearly as dramatic. He gave Maddox a quick hug before stepping back.
“Hey, Dad.”
“What’s up, man?”
“Nothing.”
Maddox ruffled his hair before his eyes found mine.
“You ready?”
My stomach tightened because I knew exactly what he meant.
I gave him a small nod.
“As ready as I’m gonna be.”
He looked at the boys for a second before setting Michael back on the floor.
“A’ight. I need both of ya’ll to come sit in the living room for a minute.”
Michael frowned immediately.
“Why?”
“Because I said so.”
His little ass sighed like he’d just been asked to do the hardest job in the world.
“We ain’t do nothing.”
We both laughed because these kids were a mess.
“I know,” Maddox said. “Ya’ll not in trouble.”
That seemed to ease Michael’s mind. He grabbed his dinosaur and hurried toward the couch while MJ glanced between the two of us.
“You sure?”
“Yes,” I said, smiling, even though it was fake as hell. “Nobody’s in trouble.”
The boys settled onto the couch while Maddox and I sat across from them. For a second, neither one of us spoke.
I could tell he was trying to figure out where to start, and hell, so was I.
Finally, Maddox rubbed his hands together before looking at both of them.
“I need to tell ya’ll something important…” MJ sat up a little straighter while Michael hugged his dinosaur tighter.
“You remember when I told ya’ll I found out I had another child?”
MJ nodded.
Michael nodded too, although I wasn’t completely convinced he remembered.
“Well… today ya’ll are gonna meet her.”
Silence filled the room as MJ looked over at me. I just dropped my head, unable to stare back into those little eyes of his.
Michael’s eyes bucked. “Our sister?”
Maddox smiled proudly and said, “Yeah. Your sister.”
“How old is she?”
“Nine.”
Michael’s eyes got big again.
“She older than me?”
“You’re five, buddy.”
“Oh.” He thought about that for exactly two seconds. Then asked, “Can she play video games?”
I laughed through the stabbing pain I felt in my chest.
“I don’t know,” Maddox admitted. “You’ll have to ask her.”
Michael seemed perfectly satisfied with that answer.
MJ stayed quiet a little longer.
“So… she’s coming here?” He finally answered.
“She is,” Maddox answered. “Her mama is bringing her down for the weekend.”
MJ looked over at me.
“You knew?”
I nodded slowly.
“I did.”
He looked back at Maddox.
“Why didn’t we know before?”
The question settled over the room.
I saw Maddox glance at me before looking back at our son.
“Daddy didn’t know before either,” I answered before Maddox could.
MJ frowned as he asked Maddox, “You didn’t?”
“No…”
He sat with that for a minute, turning it over in his head the way only older kids could.
“So… you just found out?”
“Yeah.”
Another quiet settled over the room before Michael broke it.
“Can I show her my room?”
Maddox laughed.
“That the first thing you worried about?”
Michael shrugged.
“I want her to see my race cars.”
That earned a smile from all three of us.
MJ rolled his eyes.
“She’s probably gonna want to see the whole house.”
“Oh.”
Michael nodded seriously.
“I can show her that too.”
I looked over at Maddox.
For the first time all morning, the tension I’d been seeing on his face had eased just a little.
Watching him tell our boys about Nylah…
Watching them accept her without questions about blame or betrayal… It reminded me how differently children loved. They didn’t care about timelines. They didn’t care about mistakes. They didn’t care whose fault any of it was. They only cared that they had a sister coming to visit.
Maybe adults could learn something from that.
Michael slid off the couch before anybody could stop him.
“I gotta clean my room.”
MJ looked at him like he’d completely lost his mind.
“You should’ve did that yesterday.”
“I ain’t know I had a sister yesterday.”
“That don’t even make sense.”
“It do too.”
I laughed as the two of them disappeared up the stairs arguing, their voices growing quieter the farther away they got.
I shook my head.
“They’re gonna wear me out before lunchtime.”
Maddox smiled as he leaned back against the couch.
“They excited,” he said.
“Yeah, they are.”
Neither one of us said anything for a minute. The house was filled with the sound of little feet running across the second floor, followed by Michael shouting something about race cars while MJ told him to stop yelling.
“They actually took it better than I thought they would,” I admitted.
Maddox looked toward the ceiling, listening to the chaos above us.
“I figured they would.”
“You did?”
He nodded. “They don’t have a reason not to love her.”
His answer settled somewhere deep inside me.
He was right.
Children didn’t carry the same baggage adults did. They weren’t worried about betrayal or broken trust. They weren’t thinking about timelines or mistakes.
They were thinking about having a sister.
Nothing more…
Nothing less…
“I’ve been nervous all morning,” I admitted quietly.
Maddox looked over at me and gave a small nod.
“I know.”
“You do?”
“Yeah.” He gave me a faint smile. “I know you.”
My chest tightened.
Eleven years together had taught him every version of me. Even now, after everything we’d been through, he could still read me better than anybody else.
His hand found mine, giving it a gentle squeeze.
“I know today ain’t gonna be easy for you.” I looked down at our hands but didn’t say anything. “I also know this couldn’t have been an easy decision.” His voice stayed calm. “So… thank you.”
I frowned in confusion. “For what?”
“For letting her come… For letting Nylah spend the weekend here.” He paused for a second before continuing. “I know everything between us is… complicated right now. I know we got a lot to figure out, but you didn’t have to make this easy. You could’ve fought me every step of the way.”
I swallowed hard.
“But you didn’t.” I still didn’t say anything. “And I appreciate that.”
Honestly, I didn’t know what to say.
The truth was, a part of me had wanted to fight it. Not because I wanted to keep his daughter away from him, but because I knew every moment they shared would remind me of what I’d done.